As the necessity for green vehicles (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles/electric vehicles (PHEV/EV)) has grown due to environment regulation in North America and Europe, PHEVs and EVs have come to prominence.
Consumers' most concern regarding green vehicles may be a per-charge driving range for long distance driving.
In order to increase a driving range, capacity of a high voltage battery is required to be increased, and even after capacity of such a high voltage battery is increased, an increase in capacity of a slow charging converter (or an on-board charger (OBC)) is required to be considered together with capacity of the high voltage battery in order to maintain a charge time prior to the in crease in capacity, to a degree. This is because consumers tend to be resistant to lengthening of a charge time to increase the per-charge driving range.
However, when capacity of the OBC is increased to two to four times, size and cost are inevitably increased proportionally.